I don’t think I’ve ever seen as clear a demonstration of the utter stupidity of creationism as this video, dug up by P-Zizzy. By now, most of y’all have probably heard of Ken Ham’s grotesque “creation museum” in Petersburg, KY – an absurd ode to ignorance and Pythonesque revisionism, where visitors are told that the earth is 6000 years old and that dinosaurs were contemporary with man (remember the Jesus Horse?)

Anyway – now it turns out that this monstrosity is built upon some rather beautiful fossil layers from the Ordovician era (ca 488 to 444 millions of years ago). At this time eastern United States was a seabed, bustling with ancient marine life. So in this clip, a local paleontologist takes us on an odyssey through the hills, showing us the abundance of marine fossils – ammonites, trilobites, brachiopods, bryozoans, crinoids and so on – demonstrating both the antiquity of the earth, and the evolution of life.

Creationists often claim that science, devoid of myths and comforting imaginary friends, never can match the beauty and poetry of religion. That’s not what I see here. What I see here is a dazzling testimony to the antiquity of life on earth and its evolution – soiled by a tacky exhibition of a particular brand of embarrassing human stupidity, which has existed for less than one millisecond of the earth’s history. In one million years, Ken Ham’s creation museum (and probably humanity as well) will be long gone. But evolution on earth will go on, and these ancient hills (and the life embedded in them) will still stand as a testimony to the ever-changing, ever-amazing journey of life.